Like most parents, my husband and I are in a bad habit of doing everything for the kids. Not because they're incapable of it, but because it's faster and easier if we just do it ourselves.

We know, however, that we need to take the time to show them how to do things on their own unless we want to raise grown up women who need someone else to zip up their coat, tie their shoes and wash their hair.

So to this end, I decided to show my 5-year-old how to make Easy Mac macaroni & cheese this weekend. She opened the packages, added the water, put it in the microwave, pushed the buttons and voila...she had a hot meal in 3 minutes flat.

Well, as is normal in our house, the plate sat on the table and got cold before they could tear themselves away from whatever they were doing to stop and eat. So when the 5-year-old came back to cold mac-and-cheese, she decided she was going to heat it up (as she was now a bona fide cook).

I was upstairs when I heard my husband yell, "Lauren...Oh my God...What...What are you doing? You could've burned the house down." I could tell by his voice something serious had happened. A few seconds later, the smell wafted up.

She had put her melamine plate in the microwave with a 1/4 cup of leftover mac-n-cheese on it. Later she fessed up and told us she pressed..."seven, O, O, start."

Seven minutes to incineration.

Dan caught/smelled it with 3:40 of cook time left. The plate was smoking, cracked and blackened ... the mac and cheese was unrecognizable ...and the smell was caustic.

Perhaps we'll curtail those cooking lessons until she learns to do math in first grade.